Blog

Monday, March 05, 2012

Lessons learned from contract milestone management

Manage contract milestones with automation

During my six years at Revitas, I have worked with numerous customers to help deploy contract lifecycle management tools. Each implementation uncovers a new use case and justifies a stronger need for a true end-to-end solution to achieve contracting best practices.

Through these CLM implementations across a wide variety of industries, I have noticed common challenges that exist in these contracting processes. For example, a legal division without control over contract language, managers struggling with reducing cycle-time, or the inability to search and find agreements that cause a loss of productivity.

But perhaps the biggest pain point goes beyond authoring and storing contracts. It is critical to manage the obligations and milestones agreed upon in a contract to reduce risk and ensure compliance. For each contract, questions like these need to be considered:

Are there payment milestones in the contract that need to be tracked?

Does the company have an obligation to provide a periodic project update on services or product delivery status in the contract?

If the contract is a lease agreement to rent a manufacturing facility in a foreign country, does it have an auto-renew clause with a pre-set notification period to opt out of a renewal?

These are just a few of the many milestones that exist in various types of contractual agreements. One thing is clear -- an organization is bound by these types of obligations in their contracts.

Automation is one strategy for managing the contract lifecycle and staying on top of contract milestones. With an automated system, contract owners no longer need to manually track key obligations and deadlines. The responsible party can get timely alerts based on workflow-driven processes to ensure that they address upcoming obligations for active contracts in the repository. Needless to say, the result is an incredibly efficient process that reduces human error and ensures long-term tracking even if the contract management changes hands.

How do you manage contract milestones? What challenges are most common for you?